


if this isn't how it's supposed to happen then everyone else must be doing it wrong

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus does a bad job of dancing away from his feelings, Sirius ruins meetings with purpose and Tonks lives life the way they forgot to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if this isn't how it's supposed to happen then everyone else must be doing it wrong

Remus was watching Sirius.

It was an order meeting and Remus knew everyone thought he was staring in case Sirius lost control as opposed to the truth, which was that he was just as angry as his friend and watching Sirius struggle to keep shtum was easier than counting to ten or visualising Albus’ gory death.

Just as Molly brought up Harry for the first time, presumably because Molly had nothing to dispense except random and useless parenting advice, Sirius stilled and turned slightly to catch Remus’ eye and wink. Remus flushed a little at being caught and prepared to stand; he knew what was about to happen.

Sirius pursed his lips and posed a deliberately inflammatory – and completely true – question about how much Molly could understand of Harry’s situation when she has never actually been on the front line of a battle.

The resulting fight went exactly as one would expect – Molly sharply saying that she understood war just fine, thank-you-very-much, Sirius laughing at how angry she seems to be at not being seen to be as broken as the rest of them and Molly adding an acidic implication that Sirius wanted Harry to become a child soldier and Sirius finally – and falsely – losing control and snapping back the question as to how he wasn’t one already? The meeting quickly derailed from there until, predictably, Albus pulled it to a stop before any incriminating questions could be asked.

Because of the ‘drama’ no one remembered that they had been supposed to talk about Greyback again this week, except maybe Mundungus who was a lot more observant than he let on.

The meeting filed out slowly leaving Remus alone in the kitchen with Sirius.

Remus thought about kissing him, as he always did in these moments, and didn’t because Sirius didn’t like to be touched without warning and Remus’ feelings tended to diminish when he planned ahead.

Instead, he thought, he would find Nymphadora before she left and ask her if she wanted to get a drink. She was, after all, very pretty and almost as Black as her cousin.

(*)

It had been their fifth year when they had realised that Sirius really was a Black and always would be. After the prank. It had been the same time that Remus realised that, he too, was a little darker than previously thought. He had worked this out when his prevailing feelings towards Sirius after the prank had been the same sort of awe he’d had when his friends had revealed the animagus scheme to him instead of the fear and anger James and Peter felt.

Really, of the four of them, James had been the only without some form of darkness trying to bubble over and Remus was half-sure that that was only because James had always refused to hide any of himself.

When they were fifteen they had reached the inevitable conclusion that Sirius had quite a lot of darkness in him but that he was still Sirius and therefore still a marauder. In the following years they had all become child soldiers and the underlying darkness in them had come in useful in getting them through.

Sometimes Remus wondered if they wouldn’t forgive Peter if he came back.

(*)

The next meeting they finally talked about Greyback without interruption – right up until Mundungus’ pipe set fire to the table.

Remus takes him to the pub with Nymphadora as thanks. He buys him a pitcher and drags Nymphadora outside to kiss her against the cold brickwork.

They go home to Grimmauld Place and stumble into Sirius sitting on the stairs like he had been waiting for them. He grins, only slightly more lecherous than Remus is used to.

Nymphadora falls into him, giggling when he had to shift his weight to catch her. Remus laughs too – mostly at the thought of how similar they were. His laugh catches sharp in his throat as tunnel vision makes his world thin to the strangely alluring sight of them tangled up in each other.

He couldn’t join them because it was Sirius and he couldn’t ask because he was Remus. But Nymphadora was neither of them and thus free of their hang-ups. And it was her hand that reached up to pull him into them. And it was her lips attaching to his long enough to distract him from the issues of finally giving in and succumbing to feelings he’d had for over two decades or around nine months depending on which face he focussed on.

The issues, he was sure, would resurface at the most irritating moment possible.

Instead of thinking about this, however, he decided to instead focus on the red of Sirius’ lips, the slight flush sneaking up Nymphadora’s neck and the comfortable warmth settling inside him.

(*)

Remus wakes up later, half falling off the side of a bed he doesn’t remember getting in to. It’s a spare bedroom they’re in; it must be because the walls are still dusty and the decorations haven’t been destroyed.

He wonders why they didn’t go to Sirius’ room before he remembers that Sirius sleeps mostly in the master bedroom with Buckbeak as Padfoot and occasionally in his old room which is still frozen in 1975.

He thinks of Sirius at fifteen stuck in this house full of people and things that hate him, of Sirius at fifteen being punched by his best friend, of Sirius at fifteen sitting at the end of his bed and asking what he has to do to become their friend again.

He thinks of Nymphadora and tries to imagine her any younger than she already is and finds it impossible.


End file.
